There are so many foods that we take for granted,
but if you think about it,
some of them shouldn't be there at all and seem to go against nature.
There's the ham that is so square and pink...
What's the difference between processed ham and this ham here?
Convenience.
Cheap. And then there are bananas that travel for thousands of miles
but turn up on the supermarket shelf perfectly ripe.
You like them nice and yellow. Spotty? Yes, black spots.
That's when they are really sweet.
I'm going to reveal the secrets behind supermarket food.
Most of us can't get inside a food factory, but if you could, you wouldn't see much.
Just miles of pipes and stainless steel vats.
I'm going to take it back to basics to find out what they are really doing to the food that we eat.
Inside this barn I've set up my own food factory.
The inside of this barn may look like it's full of farmyard junk,
but it's got everything I need to reveal the secrets inside supermarket food.
Square ham. I think this really divides people.
You either love it or you hate it. Some people don't like the fact that it's a bit wet
or smells a bit funny, but what's in it and why is it square?
Two different types of ham here.
What do you think the differences are?
It looks like it's gone through a machine and been all processed. Processed, right.
How you think this one is made?
I don't know, watered down.
How do you reckon they make that? It's square, isn't it? Yeah. On a machine. And that one?
That one's probably cut properly. Off the bone? Yes.
Hello, you've got the same shirt as me.
Can you tell me the difference between these two?
How you reckon they make the square ham? Squash it up, I imagine, in a press.
Is that right? Perfect! How's the farm going?
It's good. I hope it's still there when I get back but it's all right, thanks a lot.
Square ham isn't sliced from a joint.
The main ingredient they add to raw pork to make square sandwich ham is water.
One of the reasons that they add water to their meat in the factory
is to make it more tender, but also they want to add a bit of weight, so I'm going to add water too.
The best way to get lots of water into the meat is to inject it using lots of needles.
Now look at this beast.
You wouldn't want to sit on this in a hurry.
But it's not only water they add.
All I need to do now
is get my liquid ready because what I'm about to inject into the meat isn't just pure water.
First, some familiar ingredients for preserving and flavour.
In goes the salt.
And sugar.
And now, some of the less familiar ingredients. First, phosphates.
Not all ham producers use this, but if you want a lot of water in your ham, then this is the stuff to use.
The phosphates help keep the water in.
The next powder is sodium nitrite.
It's used by lots of manufacturers because it's a very good preservative.
Surprisingly, it's this white powder which gives square ham that bright pink colour.
This is going to add a little bit of flavour,
but it's going to give that rosy colour to the ham,
as well as acting as a preservative.
Mix them up and I've got what square ham producers call brine.
OK, that's ready to use now.
For the cheapest economy stuff,
they inject enough of this brine to boost the weight by up to 20%.
Now I need to pump up the pressure.
Here we go.
It's coming out quick!
Pouring out, pouring out. Get as much in as I can.
In the factory, the meat would be coming along on a conveyor and this would be happening really rapidly.
There we are, look. We can hear it gurgling away.
My machine looks like torture but it's working a treat.
Now, I reckon that's the last. Put this to one side, turn that off.
There's a lot of water that has come out around the sides of the tray,
and that doesn't matter because it has worked.
The majority of it has gone in. I can see all the little holes that I've made around the meat.
Look at that, it looks like a pin cushion.
But injecting the brine is only the first step.
The square ham factory has to do something else to the meat
to make it soak up all that liquid.
Out the back, I've got just what I need.
This should do the job.
OK, in goes the pork with all the brine in it.
I'm going to tumble my meat, just like the factory. Look at that.
It's a bit sloppy.
Tumbling makes the meat tender and sticky, and allows the chemicals in
the brine to penetrate and produce that bright pink square ham colour.
Now, as the meat tumbles round, that bashing and rolling encourages the meat to release
a substance called myosin and that's made it go all sort of sticky,
and that's going to help me bind all these chunks of meat together.
I'm going to leave that tumbling to get my meat nice and sticky,
and hopefully all the extra sugary brine will be absorbed.
I'll come back in a couple of hours to see how my square ham turns out.
There's always mushrooms ready to buy on the supermarket shelves, but there shouldn't be.
In nature, mushrooms only grow in the autumn, so what are they doing to them to make this possible?
MUSIC: "Theme from The X-Files"
Mushrooms are not like any other food crop.
They are almost alien.
They're not even plants.
Unlike plants, which rely on the sun to grow, sunlight is useless to mushrooms.
Left alone they would only mysteriously appear in autumn, which
would make them a rare and expensive luxury, like truffles and caviar.
So, how do the supermarkets get them on the shelves every single day of the year.
The answer is that the mushroom growers have found a way of tricking the mushrooms.
The secret to fooling mushrooms doesn't even start with a mushroom.
It starts underground.
The mushroom is the bit that we can see, but it's not the part that has to be tricked.
It is the white fibres underneath the ground that the farmer has to trick, and it's called mycelium.
The mushroom is the mycelium's fruit, but it only appears in autumn.
Mycelium even puzzles mushroom farmers like Patrick
who have to fool it into producing fruit all the year round.
Wow!
A bit different, isn't it?
It's like
walking into a very damp wood, it's got that feeling about it.
The principle we are trying to recreate is the natural environment of a mycelium, and as you can see,
there's the mycelium from the spawn spiking away and totally colonising the entire shed.
So mycelium is white thread-like roots that have gone all the way through this block of compost?
Yes. They look almost like spider webs, don't they? It's incredible.
These little tiny white heads are all the way
through, and this will eventually be one block of mushrooms.
That's right, eventually the whole thing will be the same organism.
This super organism only produces fruit when it is in imminent danger.
At least, that's what mushroom farmers like Patrick believe.
They've discovered how to frighten it into fruiting,
but the weird thing is they don't quite know why their trick works.
Here we have a casing layer that we're putting over the top...
very moist, very wet. What does that do?
That is a very, very good question.
It's the signal for the mushroom to fruit.
We are not really sure why, but it does.
So this is almost the mystery element of growing mushrooms?
It is the enigma, yes. But you are changing the environment drastically, aren't you?
We are. We are putting a wet, heavy coat over the top of it and
later we'll fiddle with the environment even more
and we're going to trick it into thinking it wants to fruit.
Mushroom farmers know the truth is out there.
When conditions are like the coming of winter,
the tiny pinheads break the surface, the mycelium is trying to escape.
The idea is that the mycelium feels under threat
and as a response it reproduces by pushing up its fruiting bodies, which are mushrooms.
As these grow, they open up and expose these gills, which release spores.
The spores are carried in the wind, and when they land they grow into a whole new generation of mycelium.
The most satisfying outcome of all this trickery is that we can
enjoy mushrooms all the year round, so they're not just a weird luxury.
So, are these nearly ready? I've got to taste one.
Yes, we're just about there. I think this little one will be just about... Cor, look at that!
Salt and pepper, a bit of butter. Lovely.
Mmm!
Can't beat it, can you? Simplicity.
All you need is a couple of sausages now.
No, good enough on their own. Lovely.
Back in the barn, I have set up my own square ham factory.
I have knocked up this mould to form my meat into the right shape.
The meat has been tumbling for a couple of hours, soaking up all that watery brine and tenderising.
It should be ready now.
This is just how I want it.
Right, the meat is all ready.
It's nice and sticky. Now it's time to put it into my mould.
It really is the stuff from horror films at the moment. It is really sticky.
It's quite hard to get this stuff out of my hands. And it doesn't look too appetising... look at that.
What I've got to do now is push it right down.
The importance of this
is to make sure I don't get any air gaps whatsoever.
You can see the force of it start to squeeze it down the bottom.
You can hear the air being squashed out...
little popping noises.
Now if I unscrew the plunger, and I leave the metal plate inside
and put these blocks in, which will eventually go all the way up here and keep the pressure on that meat.
Lid on.
There we go.
The meat is still raw.
To cook it slowly all the way through, I'm using this hot bath
fitted with some heating elements, like a big kettle.
Slowly lower this in.
Just rest her in there and let that cook away nice and slowly.
It'll be ready in a couple of hours.
Right, let's get this out
and see what's inside.
There we go, look.
It looks like dog food. Right...
There we go, look at that. Ba-ra!
Well, it's square, but what a disgusting colour!
There's nothing pink about it!
I've never seen anything like it in my life.
Right, I don't know if I should make a wish or not.
There we go.
Look at that. Well, it doesn't look spectacular.
In fact, the colour is almost green.
The green colour suggests I haven't got the added ingredients or the tumbling quite right.
What I've tried to do has actually worked
because all these individual pieces of meat
have all stuck together to form one massive solid lump,
which is square.
Beautiful.
Look at that. It's been a success, job done.
All I've got to do now is eat it.
Do you know what? I think I'll stick with my traditional ham.
Later we made some more square ham, but we cut the bits of meat smaller and changed the brine mix.
Phew, it came out pink!
But will it pass the taste test down on my farm?
How does it compare to the square ham that you buy in the supermarket?
That tastes like processed ham.
Yeah? Yeah. Is that something you would buy in the supermarket?
No. No. No?
If you were to score me out of ten? For taste and that, five.
For likeness to processed ham, about eight. Eight. It's very like it.
Nine. Nine? Would you like some more?
No, thanks.
Fresh Scottish salmon used to be a seasonal food,
but now you can get it all year round,
so what have they done to the fish?
Most of us know that the Scottish salmon we buy in the supermarket is farmed, not wild.
To provide a year round supply, fish farmers like Marine Harvest
have to play a huge con trick on the salmon.
They have to fool the fish into believing it's winter
when really it is summer, and summer when really it's winter.
And that's not an easy trick to pull off.
In the wild, this is where it all starts for the salmon.
The adults would swim up here in the winter to come and lay their eggs
in all this lovely sand and gravel here.
In the wild, only about 10% of these eggs survive, so the fish farmer
must use some clever tricks to make sure all the eggs hatch.
But fooling the fish doesn't start in the water.
You wouldn't believe it, but it starts here in the shed.
Trays and trays of caviar!
That's the one! Just open this up nice and gently.
Look at that moving, look!
So you are replicating what happens in nature?
That's right, yes. In this tray here, if I can just show you, we have eggs on top of here,
and once the eggs have hatched, the alevins are small enough to drop down through these gaps.
So the tiny fish can wiggle their way down here.
Yes. Like they would in between boulders?
Absolutely. So we take this off, and there we have our substrate, which is mimicking gravel beds in rivers.
How many fish potentially are in this tray?
Well, there's about 14,500 eggs in that one tray. 14,500?! That's right, yeah.
And you've got trays of them.
Yes, you can see. There's roughly about 1.1 million eggs here.
Unbelievable.
Dougie Hunter must deliver salmon to supermarkets throughout the year,
so he has to use some clever tricks to control when the eggs hatch.
We use temperature and we use light manipulation as well.
So it's a combination of these two which means we can stagger when the fish go out to the sea.
So by controlling the light and the temperature, you can hold different
trays of eggs at different levels of development. That's right, yes.
How long will it take you from getting one of these from hatching
into being a nice big salmon to send off to the fishmongers?
It takes approximately three years for that process. Three years? Yes.
So the fish we're looking at now, these eggs, they're about to hatch
and they will be on the plate in three years' time. Three years time.
Dougie keeps the trays dark and cold so it feels like winter.
When he wants a batch of eggs to hatch, he turns on the lights
and turns up the heat, so spring arrives in the shed.
Look at that! Clouds of fish.
You can just put your finger in there. That's 15 degrees.
Outside at the moment in the rivers it is about five degrees.
Right, so it's nice and warm for them. That's right.
But because they're cold blooded you warm the water up, they
can eat more, they can digest more, grow more. Yes, absolutely.
Now it's not just in the sheds that the salmon
are being fooled into behaving against their natural lifecycle.
I'm here to find out what other tricks are being used
to ensure that the supermarkets have a steady supply of salmon.
This has got to be one of the most beautiful farms I have ever been to.
But this is March in Scotland, and there is still snow on the
mountain tops, so Dougie has to fool the fish again.
In winter, adult salmon swim from the sea to the river to breed.
During the long swim, they lose most of their weight.
In the river, they become camouflaged and lose their attractive silver colour.
These changes would be a disaster for supermarkets.
In their natural life cycle they would be going back to the river,
so they would colour up just to take the shape and form of a fish going back in the river.
But you want your fish to stay nice and silver, keep that colouration which customers want. Absolutely.
So the fish farmer has a simple trick to fool the fish into behaving as if it is still summer.
Let's see what this big surprise is, this trick of yours.
Is that it? That's it. A light?
It is designed to convince the fish that it's still summer, even though we are in the winter period.
We have got small fish here which, in their natural environment, would want to mature towards the latter
part of the year, but this light actually prevents them from doing so.
We can keep them as an immature salmon
all the way through the cycle.
So you keep them immature... almost like Peter Pans of the salmon world?
The traditional bars of silver - that's what people want and that's what we have to produce.
The three year old fish in this loch have been out here all winter.
There's a beauty.
But have they been fooled into keeping their silver summer colour?
Wow, look at that. The colouration.
Beautiful. I mean, they look like a painting.
That's right, and that's ideal for customers.
That's what we want to see... bars of silver.
Right, back to base then is it, fellas?
Cup of tea and salmon sandwiches.
I bet you guys have smoked salmon everyday, don't you?
Well, it's good for you. Living the life of Riley!
Bananas are one of the sweetest fruits you can buy.
When they're ripe, they're about 18% sugar, which makes them three times sweeter than strawberries.
Now, a banana doesn't start life off like that.
When they're picked they're green, hard and bitter and amazingly, that's how they arrive in Britain.
This box of bananas has just arrived in the country. Look at that!
Look how green those are.
They're hard to get into.
You'd break your fingers. Now, break a bit of this off
and have a taste.
Now, that's very bitter, it dries your mouth out. Very chalky.
Not the nice, sweet taste you expect from a banana.
Although bananas are picked and shipped while they are still green, suppliers have worked out how to
trick the bananas into ripening on demand because we're very picky about how we like to buy them.
What colour would you go for? Slightly green, but mostly yellow so they're ready to eat.
What colour bananas would you choose and why?
I'd go for the slightly greener ones.
You like a bit more yellow on your banana.
Well, yeah, because the kids tend to eat it quite quickly.
Can I just check your bananas?
Just make sure you're not lying. Trying to keep out of your way.
Don't you worry, I saw you trying to keep out of my way.
How do you reckon they get them here all at the same stage?
I wouldn't have a clue. I don't even think about it. No?
In fridges? In fridges, yeah... In greenhouses out the back?
Yeah, could be. Cold store, something like that. Could be, could be.
So, how do they ripen green bananas on demand?
When you bring fruit home from the shop, if you put it on
an existing bowl of fruit, you'll find it will ripen much quicker
compared to if it was on its own.
The reason for this is that ripe fruit produces a gas known as ethylene.
Ethylene triggers the ripening process in other fruit.
Ethylene gas is a plant hormone, a chemical trigger produced by the fruit which tells it when to ripen.
The use of ethylene to ripen fruit was actually discovered by accident.
Fruit growers found that when they heated their storage with paraffin heaters, the fruit would ripen.
That's because when you burn paraffin, small amounts of
ethylene is released, and you only need the slightest whiff to start the ripening process.
This gave banana suppliers an idea.
Instead of waiting for the picked green bananas to ripen naturally, could they ripen them artificially?
I'm going to try out some ripening tricks myself.
A different experiment in each of these barrels.
I'm using these green bananas, which arrived at the docks this morning.
To make sure my experiments really do make a difference, I'm doing nothing to these bananas.
I'm just going to leave them outside, inside this barrel.
These should stay green, but let's see.
I'll number this barrel number one.
The bananas in the other barrels, I'm going to try to ripen more quickly.
For barrel number two, I'm going to copy the fruit bowl trick.
Will these ripe apples turn these green bananas yellow?
Put these lovely apples in here with the green bananas.
Right, barrel number three
is going to get a dose
of ethylene.
If the theory is right, a blast of this ethylene gas should
also kickstart the natural supply of ethylene inside the bananas.
Put that right at the back.
OK.
I won't have to keep gassing the bananas with ethylene.
Just one whiff should start their own supply.
Right, get the lid on. Get the lid on quick!
Right, barrel number four
is going to get my wild card.
Finally, I'm inspired to see if I can trigger the ripening with fumes, just like the paraffin heater story.
The exhaust fumes coming out of this mower also contain ethylene gas.
You can see all the exhaust fumes coming out,
filling the barrel.
That's all the drums primed and ready to go.
Now, let's see which one will ripen the fastest.
But which of my barrels primed with ethylene will give the bananas the biggest kickstart?
Will it be barrel number two, which is keeping it fruity?
Or could it be barrel number three, a real gas?
Or will it be barrel number four, a pure petrolhead?
Which of these bananas will be the pick of the bunch?
Banana suppliers allow four days to ripen their bananas,
so let's fast forward to the result of my experiment.
Let's see if any of these bananas are ready to make it to the supermarket.
I didn't do anything to barrel number one.
I just left them outside to ripen naturally.
There's not a great deal of change.
So, what has happened to the bananas I have tried to ripen artificially?
Let's have a look at these guys.
Barrel number two is my fruit bowl experiment.
These green bananas have definitely climbed two places up the ripening chart.
Right, next barrel.
Three places up the chart, barrel number three.
It looks like it's heading for top of the crops.
Let's have a look. This is the barrel I pumped ethylene into.
But the pure petrol heads are zooming up the chart, too.
But this week's banana chart highest climber is definitely barrel number three, pure gas.
It just shows you, where I've added the ethylene, either from the apples, spraying in from a canister,
or via the exhaust fumes, it has caused these bananas to
ripen much quicker, and I reckon they would be ready to send off to a supermarket.
So I've successfully copied the trick suppliers use to trigger their bananas into ripening.
Barrel number three, where I exposed the bananas to air enriched with
ethylene gas has produced the ripest, most yellow fruit.
The pick of the bunch.
And that's exactly what suppliers do.
Of course, they don't use barrels, but sealed ripening rooms.
Now that I've got all the bananas out together,
you can really see the difference.
These three have ripened up much quicker,
and are far more yellow
than my control bananas, which are still very greenish.
Let's try one of these guys.
This looks like a nice ripe banana.
Much easier to peel, this one.
There we go.
Still a little hard, but much, much sweeter.
And that's how supermarkets guarantee bananas are always just about ready to eat.
One last thing.
There we go, lovely ripe bananas.
Making my own supermarket food has been a real eye opener.
From square ham to stay-soft bread,
cornflakes to instant coffee powder,
and processed cheese to frozen peas.
That is a J.
But now I know what they're really doing to our food.
Whoa!
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